Nope. This isn't the BJCC board, but members will no longer get freebies to shows like the circus.

Those pesky ethics.

Lawyer Tom Stewart was clear as cold spring water last week when he told Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Authority members they could not -- repeat NOT -- accept free tickets to events when the new ethics law takes effect.

Don't take 'em. Don't pass them to pals. Don't call it a perk.

Simple.

It seems easy enough to grasp. Like one of those things you're supposed to learn in kindergarten.

Don't stick your fingers into the flame.

Don't walk into traffic.

Don't, if you are a public official, stick your hand out for free stuff. Period.

What's hard to understand is why it took a lawyer and a new law to explain that to group of full-grown board members. Then again, maybe what's true with children is also true for public officials.

Sometimes you have to get burned before you learn a flame is ... ouch!

It hurts. You learn. You grow.

Stewart, though, wanted to teach without the pain.

As he told the board, the only sure-fire way for members to find out how the Alabama courts will interpret the ethics law is to accept those tickets, get arrested and wind up in court.

"Don't do that," Stewart implored. "Let somebody else do that."

That was Stewart's advice. But some board members seemed so reluctant, so resistant, that I would just encourage them to ignore their lawyer.

Get those free tickets.

Use those free tickets.

Be the test case.

Then we'll get to see what our new ethics law is worth, and whether Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls takes it seriously.

Go ahead, guys. Stick your hand in the fire.

That's what it's going to take. Because some board members still didn't seem to understand why the heat was coming at all, or from where it came.

Board member Gil Wideman blamed me.

"Some of these articles you read in the paper ... go beyond just reporting and walk closer to bullying," he said. "I'm a lot resentful about somebody who wants to come in here with a damn club and start clubbing everybody."

He was talking about me, he confirmed later. I was the bully who reported that in a two-year span BJCC board members took at least 330 tickets with face value of more than $16,000. It was my bat that hit those other public officials -- city council members, county commissioners, legislators and others -- who considered board tickets their personal prerogative.

But then, public officials with that air of privilege, by their very nature, are my baby seals.

That doesn't matter. And that's the big disconnect. What you think -- what I think, or what Wideman thinks -- is irrelevant.

What matters, as Stewart so clearly pointed out, is that a brand new ethics law goes into effect March 16. Finally.